Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Fat Jet Li took a break from shooting his next film, ONCE UPON A TIME IN MCDONALD’S, to weigh in with his take on two films that have a lot of fans waiting on pins and needles. Sounds like he loved one and has little or no use for the other. Guess which is which...
Long time reader and troller. Here's a tidbit on two of my most anticipated movies of this year... aside from the usual blockbusters like matrix, hulk, DD, and etc...
First off is HERO from ZZM, Jet Li, and the entire supporting cast of who's who in Chinese cinema. Overall, it's a great movie that's beautifully shot, and the pacing of the movie is well thought out with a couple of twists that were pretty interesting. The message of the movie rings loud and clear. It leaves you with a melancholy feeling, kinda like a happy Cure song about cancer! The images, colors and slo-mo all makes the movie's certain sequences almost dreamlike. The comparison to CTHD is gonna be NON-stop, it's like CTHD stole this movie's thunder. I almost wish THIS movie came out FIRST rather than CTHD as the martial arts were MUCH better here (and more, didn't you know JET Li was suppose to play the main character in CTHD?) and the story was more broadreaching and not just a simple love story. Anyway, go see it if you get a chance.
Here's the spoiler filled info below...
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The movies is bascially about these assassins trying to kill a tyrant in china that was in the process of unify what we know now as china, before this tyrant, china was split into 5 or so different tribes that's always fighting each other, kinda like the middle east, hahahah. anyway, JET Li plays nameless, and he claimed to have killed all the OTHER assasins, as the story unfolds, he's telling his side of the story of how he killed them to this tyrant, and these assasins includes, DONNIE YUEN, Maggie Cheung, & tony Leung. and the martial arts are just fantastic to watch! (that ZZY chick from CTHD is but a diciple of Tony leung and didn't play a big part in this movie although her picture is on the poster.)
Anyway, after Jet Li finished telling the story, this tyrant rebuff the story and told what he thinks is the REAL deal that went down, and THEN, jet li confesses and finally told the REAL MOTHERF**KIN' version. after which, comes the climax, Jet li reveals that he is the REAL assasin, who's art is called, "100% death within 10 paces", which means, this tyrant is SURE to die, but when you watch the movie, you will realize what Jet did and why he chose that path. This movie's a bit philosophical, it makes one realize that what you want for yourself sometimes is way less important than what the world needs from you! And your sacrifice and suffering will do more good in the long run than you can ever imagine.
It's a great story. At first I thought it was a chinese propaganda movie, but after thinking it over, that is not the case. It's just a moral story of what it means to be a HERO... hence the title. There's also a subplot involving Maggie and Tony about TRUE love. It plays out rather nicely although I must say maggie sure aged a lot. The fighting i am not even gonna talk much about. With this cast you know it's gonna be good. Some of the wire stunts are not YWP legendary but will suffice. Book it! It's worth your time to watch it on a big screen!
NOW... on to Bulletproof Monk...
3 words,
DON'T
SEE
IT.
I wanted this to be great but it ain't so...
It's has these bad things going for it. Stupid and not plausible story. 3" x 3" camera works when the fighting starts (so you can't see shit except a hand here, a face there, and then the guy's down, exactly what you would see in a 3" x 3" box, why can't they pull the camera further? my guess is none of these actors can really FIGHT and they would look like mummy if the camera is not pulled in to make the action more exciting). No chemistry with any of the actor and actresses, it's just a bad movie...at least they could have thrown in some T&A....nope, they even messed that up.
The premise is CYF is suppose to be a Tibetan monk in charge of this magic scroll, that guy from DWMY is a pick pocketer and some how, CYF thinks he's the one that's gonna be the NEXT in line to protect the scroll, mix into this is a Nazi type dude that's freaking 100 years old that wants the scroll so he can create the REAL SUPER HUMAN race or something like that. Mixed into this bloody mess is the fighting scenes that's even more poorly edited then the WORSE JET LI US movie. Yeah, it's THAT bad, and there's this one scene where CYF, who's suppose to be this pacifist monk, pulls out 2 guns, ON TOP of a car and starts SLO MO firing at people chasing him...where da frick did he get those guns? It looks like it came from some old JW movie! Gawd it was awful...it just gets worse as the movie went on... I feel so BAD for CYF, this looks like the EOL for his Hollywood movie as far as action goes. Maybe he should stick to drama, even in this crap movie, he does show the charisma that is so evident in his glory years in HK.....
laters...
I refuse to give up hope that BULLETPROOF MONK might be fun, but in a year like this, the competition is fierce, and it does pain me to see Chow Yun-Fat in films that are getting marginalized at best. At least HERO seems to kick ass by all accounts. Can’t wait to see it...
"Moriarty" out.
